Category Archives: Australian pulp fiction

Pulp Friday: The Flower People

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Flower people“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.”

The cover of this week’s Pulp Friday speaks for itself, The Flower People by James Holledge.

I mean, like, wow man, that is one far out cover.

The Flower People was published in 1967 by Scripts Publications, the outfit set up by Horwitz Publications in the late sixties to release its racier titles. Thanks to Melbourne pulp collector Brian Coffey for alerting me to this wonderful title and allowing me to copy it.

Holledge featured recently on this site as the author of Kings Cross Black Magic and Teenage Jungle. A former clerk who became part of the stable of in-house writers brought together by Horwitz in the early sixties, his specialty was salacious journalistic tracks parading as sociological expose.

He’s in fine form in The Flower People, billed as an “inside expose” of hippy culture, delving into everything from free love, their profligate use of contraception, rejection of “square society”, drug use and radical politics.

“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.” Readers must no doubt have found the idea hippies coming to get them, in their suburban homes, to turn them on, alarming and alluring, especially if the hippy concerned looked the one on the cover of this tome.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Girl From Las Vegas

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

The Girl from Las Vegas“Everything’s on the house – including homicide.”

I thought today’s pulp Friday would be a relatively straight forward affair.

The Girl From Las Vegas, by J.M.Flynn, is one of the many pulp paperbacks from the US and UK, reprinted in Australia in the early seventies by small, anonymous operations.

In this case it was an outfit called Universal Paperbacks. The book has no republication date and the only information about the publisher is that it was printed by Griffon Press, 262 Marion Road, Netley, South Australia.

I selected it because I like the cover and it has a great tag line: “Everything’s on the house – including homicide”.

The story concerns Matt Tara, a man who goes to the closing night party of his popular local saloon, only to wake up the next morning with a skull buster of a hung over and the realisation he got so drunk during the festivities, he actually bought the establishment. Tara’s troubles mount when he discovers the bar is worth a great deal of money to the some criminal inclined members of the local community.

Ace Paperbacks originally published The Girl From Las Vegas in 1961 (cover below). I often draw a blank in my efforts to track down more in-depth information about these knock off pulps.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Last Refuge

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Last RefugeToday’s Pulp Friday is a little known but interesting book, The Last Refuge by Edward Lindall, published in 1972.

It’s interesting for two reasons.

First, it was an attempt to set a spy thriller amid the radical student politics taking place in Australia in the early seventies.

The second reason is the publisher, a little known Melbourne-based pulp publishing outfit called Gold Star Publications.

The main character of The Last Refuge is Jay Landon, an Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation agent, assigned the mission of infiltrating and destabalising a group of Maoists, led by Peking agent, Clyde Mansell. The Maoists have left their inner city terraces for the wide expanse of the Australia’s north to wage guerrilla war against US multinationals stripping the country of its mineral wealth.

Lindall’s real name was Ernest Edward Smith, an Adelaide based journalist and writer who penned 13 books, mainly crime and thrillers, but also some science fiction. He died in 1979. The Last Refuge, the only of his books released by Gold Star Publications, taps into the very real politics of what was the most physically and politically aggressive of the radical student groups operating on Australian campuses in the early seventies.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

“There’s always two sides to any story.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Gold Star Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Spies, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Curry added to National Library of Australia’s web archive

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

FUCK UR BLOG

In a sign of just how much Australia’s culture is on the skids, this site, Pulp Curry, is to be added in the National Library of Australia’s PANDORA Archive.

PANDORA is the National Library e-archive dedicated to enabling the long term preservation of online publications to ensure Australians have access to their documentary heritage now and in the future.

It’s a wonderful honour for my site to be included on the PANDORA Archive. I also get a thrill out of the fact that future generations will be able to check out my musings on Australian and international crime fiction and film, obscure pulp novels and associated topics.

For some reason, it reminds me of that scene from one of my favourite seventies dystopian science fiction films, Rollerball, when Jonathan E visits the super computer Zero to try and find out more about the corporations running the planet.

This is what he finds:

Photo credit: Angela Savage… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian crime film, Australian pulp fiction

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Pulp Friday: Sinquake

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

sinquake

“Mike Brand’s most sinister adversary – Cyn Boudin, high priestess with a lust for power.” 

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful piece of forgotten Australian pulp, Sinquake by Gene Janes.

Sinquake was produced by little known local pulp publisher and distributor, Calvert Publishing  After Horwitz Publications and Cleveland, Calvert may well have been one of Australia’s largest publisher of paper backs in the fifties and sixties. Calvert published the Carl Dekker ‘On the Spot’ mystery series, as well as a large number of Westerns, war and romance novels.

There’s no publication date for Sinquake but it was probably released some time in the early to mid-sixties, before the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. The cover was supplied to me courtesy of local pulp collector, Graeme Flanagan.

Sinquake features Mike Brand, an Australian trouble-shooter for the British secret service. I’ll let the back cover blurb explain the rest.

“The Soviet was using the enormous appeal of BLACK MAGIC, with its terrifying rites and orgies, together with the sensual and seductive beauty of “SIN” – Mademoiselle Cynbarra Boudin, the high priestess of the Cult’s British circle, to ensnare top political and diplomatic figures into compromising situations.

With recent scandals as a blue-print, the political stability of the Free World is threatened by moral chaos.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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